My daughter and I collected conkers and neither of us checked the time

Dear Delyara, That almost never happens now. Usually we are hurrying somewhere or heading home or trying to fit one last thing into the shrinking edge of the day. But on Sunday we were walking back from the shops and she spotted conkers under a tree in the park. We ended up staying there almost half an hour, crouched under branches, both of us laughing every time a really good one fell out of the shell cleanly. Nothing about it was important in the adult sense. That is probably why it mattered so much. We came home with our pockets full and our dinner late, and I didn’t care at all.